Forbes Profiles Alex Day

Money mag Forbes has just published a profile on YouTube musician Alex Day (alongside a photo of him standing in a TARDIS: we approve!), wondering if the young impresario is “the future of music”:

His recipe for success was simple: earnest, youthful music with correspondingly playful videos. It might not be for everyone, but there is a whole undeserved and loyal market for this material on YouTube, and Alex put more time and passion into that anyone else.

“I make music people enjoy and they buy it,” Day told me over email. “That’s my big trick. If I was only doing it for fame, I could sign with a label. If I was only doing it for money, I could churn out rubbish every two weeks. But I take my time and put out quality stuff I’m proud of, for the love of making great music and sharing it with an audience—the more people that hear it, the better. I want to make things that people can love.”

The writer of the article notes that when Alex was trying to push his “Forever Yours” single to the top of the UK charts, he advised him to find a label or it would never happen. Instead the single hit number four and had more than 130,000 downloads worldwide. The video has been viewed more than 4 million times.

Now that I have a good sense of what Alex Day is capable of as an artist, businessman, and strategist, his next move has my complete support. He’s ignoring the charts all together, and he’s no longer interested in gaming them or chasing them as status symbols. (“The charts don’t matter anymore. Nobody knows or cares who’s #1.”) This realization freed him up to take a bold step: releasing three singles at the same time, which while killing chart placement, is better for the fans and for the music.